Mumbai, July 23: As many as 66 suspected bookies have been picked up in Thane in the middle of the drawn Test at Lord’s in the biggest such crackdown in recent memory.

Cash and betting equipment worth more than Rs 24 lakh were also seized, police said.

“The operation is still on and we will be able to give more details later. We have picked up a total of 66 people, including main bookie Praful Dombivli. We could arrest eight to 10 of them. We have also seized 10 TV sets,” K.P. Raghuvanshi, who heads the anti-terrorist squad, said.

The ATS — in a massive joint operation with Mumbai and Thane police — raided the Al Majid housing complex in Mumbra’s Kismat Colony and caught a large group betting on the Lord’s match, sources said.

Although police officials remained tight-lipped about details of the operation, the sources said at least four prominent players in betting circles are in the net. They are Dombivli, Jayanti Thane, Pradeep Nasik and Chetan Ghatkopar.

The police seized 150 cellphones, 12 laptops, 10 colour television sets, calculators, books and other materials used in betting. A large amount of cash was also seized.

The operation came two days after Mumbai police’s anti-extortion cell arrested 55-year-old Rajesh Jham, a bookie who allegedly provided information to Dawood Ibrahim’s associates Chhota Shakeel and Faheem Machmach.

Jham, wanted for the murder of a Bandra jeweller in June 2005, was picked up from a five-star hotel in Bangalore, where he was hosting his daughter’s wedding.

Crime branch sources said Jham played a key role in the D-gang’s extortion operations, giving them leads about wealthy businessmen who could be targeted. The police hope that his interrogation would throw up information about Dawood’s betting empire.

It is, however, unclear if today’s operation was in any way connected with Jham’s arrest. The ATS had earlier indicated that two bookies arrested a couple of months ago had provided key leads on betting syndicates in Mumbai.

Cricket betting reportedly has a turnover of more than Rs 500 crore, with Mumbai and its satellite suburbs like Thane, Mumbra, Navi Mumbai, Panvel and Lonavala being major hubs. However, today’s was only the second crackdown led by Mumbai police on betting syndicates.

In February 2003, a crime branch unit had swooped on a meeting of bookies at a bar in Malda in the north-west suburbs of Mumbai and detained 23 of them.

However, following the intervention of a top crime branch official, the bookies were let off after a Rs 50-lakh pay-off. The official was later arrested for accepting bribes from fake stamp scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi.